Southeast Asia Semester | Carpe Diem Education Gap Year

As some who needed a year off between high school and college, Carpe Diem was the best fit for me. As part of the Southeast Asia gap year program one of my favorite things was our partners and host families. At Punpun, a greenhouse building and seed saving organization, I’ve never felt more exhausted, but loved. The people there were so kind and caring as well as invested in educational and experiential learning. While there, I met people with similar interests who showed me that I can do exactly what I want to do in life.

If you’re thinking of taking a gap year, this gap year semester is amazing! I really got to develop as a person and had incredible experiences (and food). I also met really kind and down to earth people on this program, made such great memories, and friends! You really get the best of both worlds on this program - rugged nature adventures and city life activities, which I didn’t know about prior. My favorite part of the trip was going to IWP, which was a Buddhist feminist retreat. 10/10, would recommend this trip.

Carpe Diem changed my life for the better. My semester in Southeast Asia truly was the best time of my life. I experienced so many things that I would have never been able to do had I not found Carpe. For instance building mud bricks, staying at a hill tribe, or eating lunch in a tiny hut on a mountain of rice fields. My expectations were exceeded and I learned so much about myself as a traveler. The friends I have made on this trip are amazing and truly some of the best people I have ever met. I couldn’t recommend it more highly.

Carpe Diem is 100% an experience I would recommend to others. The mix of volunteer service work with explorative more touristy activities was excellent. A highlight of my trip was our experience at Pun Pun farm in northern Thailand. We spent a day helping build mud bricks for a community member’s house. The work was tiring but extremely rewarding. Tiring but very rewarding sums up the whole of my semester perfectly. I now have built great friendships with my fellow group members and wonderfully relationships with our various host families and organizations.

My experience with carpe diem had been wonderful so far! Some crucial highlights have been my groups experience at PUN PUN farm. We spent a day learning how to make mud bricks and helping build a locals house. It was the dirtiest, yet most inspiring, day of my gap year so far. The amount of appreciation I have gained for my own life and living back in the states is astronomical. Immediately following our week at PUN PUN we traveled to a local village for home stays to learn about bamboo, soap, and tea making. The severe language barrier was a struggle, but it really highlighted the simpler things in life like a silent dinner or the process of weaving clothes. Another huge highlight of my gap year experience so far was our SCUBA week in Koh Tao! My instructor, Nacho, was amazing and all of the wonderful fish and corals we saw were beautiful! After gaining my open dive certification, I realized on my last dive I didn’t want to never see underwater world again. Carpe Diems gap year experience so far has lead me to find my new passions like marine biology, the art of making our own bread, or even hand washing my own clothes. My experience of group travel with carpe so far has been wonderful and gives me the courage to do another semester with carpe as a independent latitude student.

The best 3 months of my 21 years of life has to be the most to the point way to describe my time in Thailand, Cambodia, and Vietnam with Carpe Diem Education. I am 21 and finishing up my college sociology degree this year. For fall term of my senior year, I wanted to do something different, and experience true hands on learning outside of the traditional classroom lecture setting. This trip to South East Asia truly went above and beyond what I could have ever expected to get out of my time abroad. From week one in Thailand when we each got placed in our own homestay with the most amazing and sweet host moms, to the last week of the trip directing our own student travel through vietnam, each experience I look back on with so much gratiude, knowlege, insight, and a smile. Carpe Diem truly does give you the ability to have such unique and amazing experience, and there is also such a good balance of volunteer work, weeks in homestays, and life off the beaten path, to city days for self care and relaxation. One of my fondest memories from the whole trip that I think about daily was out treck in Thailand. We went on a 3 day treck in Thailand led by 3 amazing locals who know the area and land so well. They led us through dense bamboo forests, that would open to the most amazing views on the hillside of a rice patty field. We stayed the night in village leaders home in a small Lahu village. The full day we were there was my favorite day of the trip. We got up and walked 30 mins through the village and into a rice patty field where to the left of the path was vegetables growing, ahead was a bamboo forest, and down the hill was a stream. We brought 2 chickens, a sack of rice and some eggs. We collected water form the stream, picked vegetables from the field, made a fire with bamboo and cooked the rice, chicken, and eggs in the bamboo logs over the fire. We also learned to carve spoons, chop sticks, bowls, and cups. We ate the meal we made on the beautiful hillside in Thailand. Something about that day was so special, peaceful, and such an amazing learning experience. Carpe Diem allows you to get to experience and connect with others so different from you. Each homestay family I stayed with showed me such kindness, love, and were so welcoming despite language barriers. I have shared so many laughs, hugs, and amazing homecooked meals with my host famalies. Most homestays are with at least two others in the group which is nice and comfortable. A quick trip recap of everything amazing Thailand: A week learning Thai, and homestays with sweet host moms. 10 days volunteering and staying off the beaten path in an amazing Akka village. 4 days of trecking through beautiful Thailand rice/ pineapple field hillside. Some amazing hostels and city days to explore beautiful tempels. A week on an organic permaculture farm learning about sustainability. 5 days of silent meditation with monks learning about buddhism, and mindfullness. A quick trip recap of everything amazing Cambodia: Days in Phnom Phen learning about the genocide, killing fields, and the Cambodian Center for Human Rights. Angkor Watt of course. A week on a village off the Mekong river working on a clean water project homestay living. A quick trip recap of everything amazing Vietnam: Days to explore the amazing city of Ho Chi Minh. A week with very funny Tan Tao University students staying in homestays, english teaching at primary schools, and a school for the deaf and disabled, picking pineapples, cooking, and singing a lot of karaoke. 5 days on the beautiful beach in Nha Trang getting suba certified, and tanning on the beach. Days in the city to go to museams and learn about the Vietnam War. And lastly student directed travel. Student directed travel is where we got to plan how to get from Nha Tang to Hanoi which was 800 miles in 1 week. We got to plan where we wanted to go, stay, forms of transportaiton, activites, and had to stay within a budget. It was so amazing. So there you have it, the best 3 months of my life by far! The guides for Carpe Diem are also amazing, and really made the trip flow well. They handled the tough situations with ease and are such wonderful, and positive people. Having 10 students and 2 guides total was also great! All Carpe Diem trips have 15 people or less. I would highly reccomend going abroad with Carpe Diem whether you have just graduated high school or are about to graduate college. I feel refreshed, and have a new motivation, and goals for my life becuase of my time abroad with Carpe Diem Education!!

Traveling with a cohort of students was the best thing I have ever done. I learned more about myself in 3 months than I have my whole life. I learned how to live independently and how to travel independently. I got to experience a culture that was close to mine in the textbooks but in the real world it was different and very eye opening.

My time is Southeast Asia was something I will never forget. I got to build incredibly friendships with people and experience a lot of firsts. We went zip lining , snorkeling, to the beach and we volunteered with amazing foundations. We learned Thai and experienced what it was like to live with a host family. Overall this trip has taught me a lot about myself and I would recommend that everyone study abroad.

My time abroad in Thailand and Cambodia was my first time ever leaving the United States. It has always been a dream of mine to travel and I’m forever thankful to Carpe Mundi for giving me the opportunity. The 2 months I spent in Southeast Asia were the best 2 months of my life. I got to hike with elephants, go zip lining, scuba dive in the warm waters of Cambodia, explore huge cities, and spend time volunteering with local people and communities. I made deep connections with my host family and the people in my cohort. Not only did I get to experience all of these amazing things and make life long friendships, I was also able to learn more about myself. I discovered more about who I am as a person and the different things I am interested in. I was also able to push myself out of my comfort zone and try things I never thought I would be able to do. This experience is something that will last with me for the rest of my life.

Those 3 months were some of the most incredible of my life, and I will be eternally grateful to Carpe and all the amazing people who make these trips happen. So I wanted to say thank you! I still think about the trip everyday, and I am filled with so many memories and experiences that will carry on into the rest of my life, and hopefully keep me traveling for a long, long time! I have the travel bug now for sure. The Southeast Asia trip was just unbelievable; I have nothing but good things to say about it, and if any future students have any questions about anything..packing or what to expect, etc, i would love to be of help! I hope to stay part of the carpe family and maybe one day even lead a trip of my own! I just wanted to let all the staff at carpe know how much this trip meant to be, and what a great program you guys have. The trip has changed my life. Thank you for everything!

This was the first time I had ever left the United States. Being Cambodian I was really drawn to the South East Asia Program since my dad didn't really teach me very much about our heritage. I was very afraid at first but as it came closer to the day we would leave I was so excited. To partake in the Meditation retreat in Thailand, the ancient temples of Angkor Wat and the home stay in Sapa, Vietnam I can safely say that this was the most transforming experience I had ever had in my life. I learned more about myself, others, and the world in the three months abroad than the 20 years I had in Portland, Oregon. If you have any doubts or inclinations not to travel but you want to Carpe Diem will help you and you will learn along the way.

I didn't know what to expect from this experience, but when it happened it was a journey that changed my perspective in many ways. Carpe Diem education gave me an opportunity to travel and learn. I was challenged mentally and emotionally and was able to get out of my comfort zone which was something I never knew would be possible. I grew as a person. The Overseas educators were supportive and pushed us to get out of our comfort zones. The culture, the history, the food, and meeting new people was incredible. I surrounded myself with new adventures and through that I discovered myself.

Carpe Diem was a last minute decision for me. I didn't know what to do with my semester free and out of the blue Carpe showed up. I had no idea what I was getting myself into but I didn't look back. The trip felt very real. A lot of these programs can be a lot of bullshit where you go to a "remote country" and live it your way when you should be living it their way, if that makes sense. Carpe Diem made it as real as possible. This included talking about how problematic it was that we were all there doing this and realizing our privilege and also respecting that their culture is their culture and not ours to take. Very well done.